Joseph Scapellato earned his MFA in fiction at New Mexico State University. His fiction appears in Kenyon Review Online, Post Road, Unsaid, Harper Perennial's anthology Forty Stories, and other places. Joseph is currently a PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston.

Derek Palacio is an assistant professor of English. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere, and his story "Sugarcane" was selected for inclusion in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013. He is the author of the novella How to Shake the Other Man.

Cathy Day is the author of two books: The Circus in Winter and Comeback Season. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ninth Letter, [PANK], and The Millions. She teaches fiction writing at both the graduate and undergraduate level, most recently at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

Matt Bell is the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award and an Indies Choice Adult Debut Book of the Year Honor Recipient. He teaches in the MFA program at Arizona State University.

Jennine Capó Crucet is the author of the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers and the story collection How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the John Gardner Book Prize, and the Devil’s Kitchen Award. Winner of an O. Henry Prize and the Picador Fellowship, she teaches at Florida State University.

Dave Griffith is the author of A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America. He directs the creative writing program at Interlochen Center for the Arts. He is currently a Mullin Scholar at the University of Southern California's Center for Advanced Catholic Studies.

Richard Nash is vice president of community and content at Small Demons. From 2001-2009 he ran Soft Skull Press for which work he was awarded AAP's Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. In 2010 the Utne Reader named him one of Fifty Visionaries Changing Your World. 

Austin Kleon is the New York Times best-selling author of three illustrated books: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Newspaper Blackout.

Julie Buntin is the Director of Programs and Strategic Outreach at the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses. Her writing has appeared in Cosmo, Publishers Weekly, the Rumpus, and One Teen Story.

Cathy Day is the author of two books: The Circus in Winter and Comeback Season. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ninth Letter, [PANK], and The Millions. She teaches fiction writing at both the graduate and undergraduate level, most recently at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.